More importantly, each of them had a squad of modern warbots under her command. Collectively they had a lot more firepower than Chief West’s security teams, and they weren’t shy about basically taking over the ship and posting their own guards wherever they wanted them.
That worried me. I didn’t think Akio was going to suddenly decide to kill us over money, but I wasn’t so sure about Lord Yamashida. When Chief West called me into his office I was really hoping he was going to bring me in on some kind of secret defense plan.
“You’re pretty sharp, kid,” he chuckled. “Yeah, everyone on this ship keeps a few aces up their sleeve. But a company of marines is a lot of firepower, so everyone needs to do their part. You ready to pitch in on some sneaky contingency plan shit?”
“You bet, Chief! What can I do?”
“First off, I’m giving you a bigger detachment of warbots. I want you to stash some of them in your cabin’s storeroom, and be ready to take out the inugami in your area and set up a defensive position where noncombatants can hide out. Dusty’s cabin is right down the hall from you, and there’s a couple of other guys who might need to run your way instead of heading for a safe room.”
“Yes, Chief. Any chance I can get some time on an industrial fabricator in the next few days? This would work better if I could build some special hardware. Chameleon mines, sensor clouds, that kind of thing.”
“I can do better than that. The captain has approved you for security team membership, so I’m giving you access to some of our hidden assets. There’s a secret fabricator bay where you can build stuff like that without our guests noticing, and have it delivered through a network of secret passages that cover the critical parts of the ship. I’m keeping the system pretty busy right now, but I’ll set the priorities so you can get some jobs of your own in. You’ve got permission to make anything that will help you fight these guys, so don’t worry about getting billed for it. Just make sure you don’t do something obvious and give the game away, alright?”
“Of course, Chief. Um, are we expecting a fight?”
“I don’t know, do you think you can convince your new boyfriend to play nice?”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” I protested.
“Sure, that’s why he keeps coming up with excuses to see you. Just don’t dump him while we’re in gunnery range of his ships, alright?”
“I’m not dumping him!”
“Oh, so you’ve decided to be a yakuza princess? Too bad, I was starting to think you could make a good assistant.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re impossible, Chief. Here I am trying to be professional, and you’ve got to make jokes about my personal life.”
“Who’s joking? You do what you want, kid, but don’t forget that decisions have consequences. Any way you go, this is serious business.”
“I know.” I huffed, and crossed my arms. “Look, I like him, but I know I can’t really trust him. I’m just trying to keep things friendly until this whole thing is over. Hopefully he’ll play nice as long as he’s still trying to win me over.”
“We can hope. But just in case, I need you to do some recon work too. Nothing obvious, just collect readings on the marines and their gear with those hidden sensors of yours. We don’t have a lot of info on what those girls are capable of, and every little bit helps.”
“Sure, that sounds easy.”
“Oh, and the captain is planning to bring you along for all the planning meetings while we’re in hyperspace, so be ready for that.”
“Yes, Chief,” I said sourly.
Great, now the captain was trying to use me against Akio. How long would it be before Akio started pressuring me for inside information on the Square Deal? This whole situation just sucked.
We broke orbit later that day, in the middle of a whole squadron of Masu-kai ships. The two salvage vessels were lumpy, ungainly-looking things about five hundred meters long, that were packed full of survey drones and industrial equipment. They didn’t have much in the way of weapons, but they didn’t need them considering the size of our escort.
The pair of drone carriers that Lord Himura sent with us were fat, boxy vessels eight hundred meters long, packed full of drones and expendable munitions. Where the Square Deal carried a couple hundred attack drones to fend off pirates, each of these ships had thousands of the robotic attack craft packed into its magazines. Not to mention hundreds of much larger escort drones designed to fend of missile attacks and drone strikes, and who knows how many boarding bots.
That was far too much firepower for the Square Deal to fight, but at least we had a remote chance of getting away from them if things went bad. It takes time to launch swarms of drones, more time for them to make their attack runs, and a lot of hits to burn through the outer layers of a well-armored ship and start destroying vital equipment like the fusion reactors. The drone carriers couldn’t match our acceleration, and their drones couldn’t make the rough transition between the Delta and Gamma Layers under their own power. If we ran fast enough, and dodged up and down among the layers of hyperspace well enough, they might not be able to catch us.
The frigate that Akio and Lord Yamashida were using as their flagship was another story. At eleven hundred meters long it was an intimidating sight. Sixty million tons of armor and weapons, with a top acceleration of at least thirty gravities. Unlike the drone carriers it was designed for close combat, with heavily armored flanks and huge turret-mounted mass drivers arranged along the top and bottom of the ship.
It was those mass drivers that really worried me. The eight main turrets each housed a pair of 20cm mass drivers with a muzzle velocity somewhere well into the tens of thousands of kilometers per second, and the arrangement allowed all of them to fire on targets in a broad arc to either side of the ship. The squadron’s formation put the Square Deal right in the middle of their firing arc, and our deflectors weren’t going to stop firepower of that magnitude. They’d punch right through our armor as well, and with several kilotons of impact energy it wouldn’t take many hits to wreck the ship.
Compared to that the various missiles, drones and lighter mass drivers the ship also carried were just icing on the cake. As long as we were within a couple of light-seconds of those guns we weren’t going anywhere.